Vladimir Putin spent over an hour looking at books in the new pavilion at the All-Russian Exhibition Centre, where the 23rd Moscow International Book Fair is underway.

First, the prime minister went over to a stand featuring Boris Minayev's biography of Yeltsin. The prime minister greeted Naina Yeltsin, the widow of Russia's first president, and signed some copies of the book, for which he wrote a preface.

The directors of the Children's Literature publishing house asked Vladimir Putin for help: The publishing house is up for sale for 135 million roubles, and stands to lose its recognised brand if bought by a non-specialist investor. The publishing house also presented the prime minister with a series of books by Sergei Alexeyev about the Great Patriotic War.

Then, well-known journalist and writer Vasily Peskov presented the prime minister with 12 volumes of his complete works and invited him to a Russian Geographical Society meeting. Vladimir Putin promised he would attend. The prime minister is a great fan of Russian nature, and liked a collection of photo-reports from Kamchatka and Altai. One of the photographers told him how he won the Golden Shot award, "I spent eight hours sitting in cold water so I could take this picture of a brown bear that had just caught a fish." "It really is an amazing photo; and, indeed, bears out there are as common as dogs are in Moscow," Vladimir Putin said.

The prime minister visited about 30 stands representing different publishing houses at the fair.